From 500 to five-hundred-million

While I love the Harry Potter books and, to a lesser extent, the Harry Potter movies, I am not one of those fans who wants to find out everything there is to know about the author, the actors, or the other people involved in the creation of the Harry Potter world.

I don't spend my time online, searching for the latest tidbit that has fallen from the lips of J.R. Rowling or Daniel Radcliffe or anyone else. Sure, if I encounter a piece of news related to the magical world, the books, the movies or the people of Harry Potter, I won't turn away but I don't spend my time actively seeking such nuggets.

That explains why it is entirely possible that something I write about on this blog that seems like a remarkable revelation to me might just be old hat to the more dedicated Potter fans who have stumbled across my humble offerings. Things that are new and exciting to me, I often discover, have already been recognized and talked over in the more public fandom.

Oh well...

That being said, I still feel a bit of a thrill when, in the course of my meanders through life, I run across an interesting bit of information about the Harry Potter books.

And exactly that happened to me today.

As a Father's Day gift, my dog bought me a trade paperback copy of Allison Hoover Bartlett's 2009 book The Man Who Loved Books Too Much (Penguin). Hoover Bartlett's book is a perfect gift for me (Marlee Marie knows me well!) and I'm very much enjoying the opportunity to read it.

On page 22, however, I came across the piece of Potter-data that has me quite interested.

Hoover Bartlett, in setting out a brief list of some of the rare books collectors look for at book fairs, identifies the first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as one of them.

Cool.

She also states that there were only 500 copies of The Philosopher's Stone printed in that first edition. I was stunned, to be honest. That was a piece of Potter-data that was completely new to me. 500 copies. That was it.

Unbelievable. That's why a copy of that first edition is now worth, according to Hoover Bartlett, $30,000 in American money. Wowweeee.

I'm a bit of a book collector myself. I don't go to book fairs or buy expensive copies from dealers but I do like to browse garage sales and used book shops and charity book sales, looking for books of interest to me. I've picked up several autographed volumes along the way, as well as a volume of poems by John Milton from 1674 and a first edition Ian Fleming, which is apparently worth a bit.

I guess I'll have to keep an eye out for that Harry Potter first edition as well. Not that I expect to find one here in my remote little corner of Canada but you never now.

And wouldn't it be great to own one of those rare 500, the books that represented in and of themselves a triumph for J.K. Rowling when she first saw them delivered from the publisher, the advanced guard, so to speak, of what would eventually become the Harry Potter empire.

And spawn adoring blogs like this one.